Elizabeth Truss: With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to update the House, on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, about the NATO and G7 leaders’ meetings in Brussels last week. Together with our allies, we agreed to keep the pressure up on Putin to end his appalling war in Ukraine through tougher sanctions to debilitate the Russian economy; through supplying weapons to Ukraine and boosting NATO’s eastern flank; through providing humanitarian aid in dealing with the wider consequences of the crisis; and through supporting Ukraine in any negotiations it undertakes.
Strength is the only thing Putin understands. Our sanctions are pushing back the Russian economy by years and we owe it to the brave Ukrainians to keep up our tough approach to get peace. We owe it to ourselves to stand with them for the cause of freedom and democracy in Europe and across the world. It is vital that we step up this pressure. We cannot wait for more appalling atrocities to be committed in Ukraine. We know that the impact of sanctions degrades over time, and that is why we need to act now.
Next week, NATO Foreign Ministers will meet to follow up on the statements of leaders. I will be pressing our allies over the next weeks for all of us to do more. On oil and gas, the UK has already committed to ending imports of Russian oil by the end of this year. We must agree a clear timetable with our partners across the G7 to end dependence on Russian oil and gas permanently. On banks, we have already sanctioned 16 major Russian banks. We have hit Gazprombank and placed a clear prohibition on Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank. We want to see others adopt these sanctions and go further.
On individuals, we have cracked down on oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich. Last week, we sanctioned the despicable Wagner Group of mercenaries. On ports, Britain has banned entry to Russian vessels at all our ports. I will be lobbying our partners across the G7 to join us in stopping Russian ships.
We must maximise the flow of weapons that are being supplied to Ukraine under the United Nations charter of self-defence. The UK was the first European country to start sending lethal aid to Ukraine, and we are doubling our support with a further 6,000 missiles, including next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and Javelin anti-tank weapons. We are equipping our Ukrainian friends with anti-aircraft Starstreak missiles. We are also strengthening NATO’s eastern flank, deploying troops to Bulgaria, and doubling the numbers of troops in Poland and Estonia.
We are co-ordinating deliveries with our allies, and we want others to join us in getting Ukraine what it needs. The UK is providing £220 million in humanitarian support to help the people of Ukraine, from shelters to heaters and medicine. Today we announced our partnership with Australia to fly out more relief, including blankets, cooking equipment and power generators. We are getting supplies directly into Ukraine’s encircled cities, with £2 million in canned food, water, and dried food. As refugees come into countries such as Poland, we are working with the UNHCR so that it is informed about  the UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme. That scheme has already had more than 150,000 applications, thanks to the generosity of the British public.
We know that Putin is not serious about talks. He is still wantonly bombing innocent citizens across Ukraine. That is why we must do more to ensure that he loses and we force him to think again. We must not just stop Putin in Ukraine; we must also look to the long term. We must ensure that any future talks do not end up selling out Ukraine, or repeating the mistakes of the past. We remember the uneasy settlement of 2014, which failed to give Ukraine lasting security. Putin just came back for more. That is why we cannot allow him to win from this appalling aggression, and why this Government are determined that Putin’s regime should be held to account at the International Criminal Court.
We will work to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We have set up a negotiations unit to ensure that the strongest possible support is available to the Ukrainians, alongside our international partners. We have played a leading role alongside our G7 allies in driving the response to Putin’s war, and I want to ensure that that unity continues. Sanctions were put on by the G7 in unison, and they should not be removed as long as Putin continues with his war and still has troops in Ukraine. That is not all. We must ensure that Putin can never act in this aggressive way again. Any long-term settlement needs to include a clear sanctions snapback that would be triggered automatically by any Russian aggression.
In the aftermath of Putin’s war, Ukraine will need our help to build back. In these exceptional circumstances, we have a duty to step up with a new reconstruction plan for rebuilding Ukraine. We will work with the international community to do that. At this defining moment, the free world has shown a united response. Putin is not making the progress he craves, and he is still not serious about talks. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people know that everybody in the United Kingdom stands firm with them. We were the first European country to recognise Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. Thirty years on, we are the first to strengthen its defences against Putin’s invasion, and lead the way in our support. Over the next week, I will be working to drive forward progress in unison with our allies. Together, we can secure a lasting peace that restores Ukraine’s sovereignty. Together, we can ensure that Putin fails and Ukraine prevails. I commend this statement to the House.

Stephanie Peacock: I congratulate the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on his campaigning on this issue and on securing this  important debate. As a country, we are all incredibly proud of our ex-servicemen and women. They have performed the ultimate public service, and if this has caused serious injury, illness or death, veterans and their families deserve to be fairly compensated. At the moment, however, far too many veterans are being denied the payments they are entitled to, leaving them at risk of poor mental health, poverty and the feeling of being let down by the country they have served with distinction.
At the heart of this issue is Veterans UK, which is in charge both of war pensions and of the armed forces compensation scheme. It is allowed to mark its own homework, as the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said, because it is responsible for both assessing claims and awarding any payments. Indeed, according to its own customer satisfaction survey, 80 % were not happy with the service, as was highlighted by the hon. Member for Midlothian. So building on the contributions of hon. Members today, I am going to address the delays in the process, the burden of proof that the system places on our veterans, and the reasons that current Government plans do not go far enough in solving these problems. Since 2009, successful applications to the armed forces pension scheme have fallen from 62% to 46%, while rejections have risen from 30% to 40%. At the same time, average clearance times for claims have risen to more than 100 days for both the AFCS and war pensions, with war pension wait times missing the Government target since 2011. This means that, over the last decade, our veterans have been forced to wait longer by months, not weeks, only to be more likely to be rejected by their compensation schemes.
The first stage of the application is just the beginning, however. For veterans who feel they have been unfairly rejected, a lengthy and difficult appeal system awaits. Here, rather than Veterans UK having to prove an injury or illness is not related to service, veterans are tasked with the burden of proving it is. Too often, veterans have to rely on forces charities. As brilliant as they are, this should not be necessary, as the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) said so passionately.
In a document that was also submitted to the Select Committee on Defence in 2021, the forces organisation Justice4Troops shared with us the following examples. Bruce Menzies was medically discharged in March 2020 with complex PTSD. He had a formal diagnosis, but his compensation claim was rejected, stating that his diagnosis was due to his “personality” and “genetics.” Bruce became homeless in May 2020 and faced a sharp deterioration in his health, becoming hospitalised.
Justine Montgomery joined the RAF with no pre-existing conditions. She sustained an injury to her right knee while in service. She was medically discharged, left unable to walk and in need of strong pain and nerve medications for the rest of her life. Her application for compensation was also rejected. She described the process as
“tedious, draining and near enough impossible to complete let alone progress with.”
Roy Shirlaw was an RAF engineer. He was injured on operations in 2011, resulting in surgery on his back. He was discouraged from making a claim, and when he did it was rejected as he was deemed to be “not on duty.”   This was later overturned at appeal, but his claim was still only partially accepted and the injuries were deemed to be not severe enough to qualify for compensation. Ten years after his initial injury, he is still stuck in the appeals process.
Each of these three people was medically discharged by the forces, but somehow they ended up unable to prove their worthiness for a scheme designed for injured and unwell ex-forces personnel. Veterans are not medical experts, yet they are forced, over and again, to try to prove the extent of their injuries, with many ending up stuck in the system for years and many forced to give up entirely, as the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Msusb Qaisar) highlighted.
As has been mentioned, nuclear veterans have an even harder time than most in claiming compensation. The BNTVA and Labrats campaign groups and the Daily Mirror report that they are forced to prove that each and every medical condition is caused specifically by radiation, rather than being a result of service generally. Having flown through mushroom clouds, cleared up debris and crawled through the fallout of nuclear bombs as Britain tested our atomic weapons for the first time, the latest National Radiological Protection Board study on the health of these veterans found they are more likely to have and die from chronic myeloid leukaemia and several cancers, as well as being at a greater risk of self-harm. However, with limited medical records available from the time of the tests, proving their exposure to radiation and claiming compensation is a near-impossible task for these veterans, many of whom died before being able to claim a single penny. It is time the Government properly recognised our nuclear test veterans. We are the only country in the world not to do so. The Prime Minister should meet them, as he promised, and give them the recognition they deserve.
Money to address inefficiencies and digitalise Veterans UK is important but, for the veterans who have had their health, wellbeing and happiness taken from them, an online form rather than a paper one will be little consolation. In the last few days, Veterans UK has updated its site with flowcharts and the promise of bitesize videos to come. This is not a replacement for ensuring the compensation system is transparent, fair, impartial and consistent all the way through. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke powerfully about how we need to make sure Veterans UK is properly resourced.
I conclude with these questions for the Minister. What is he doing to ensure that veterans who are already dealing with illnesses, disabilities and injuries do not have to fight for the compensation that is rightfully theirs? Does he support an independent review into how Veterans UK operates and what improvements can be made, and is he considering direct lodgement, as advocated by the Royal British Legion and outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders)?
It is a question of ensuring that every veteran gets a fair and impartial chance to claim the compensation they are entitled to, having dedicated their lives to serving our country. The Government have a duty of  care to our ex-forces personnel. If Ministers continue to ignore those issues, they will be failing in that duty and failing our veterans.

Julian Lewis: Will the Minister find time to update the House on the progress of a small-scale matter but an important one—the cohort of about 250 war widows who lost their pensions on co-habitational remarriage and did not get them back when the law changed?